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Cho’Gall: I Like This Fight

Friday night we went straight for Bastion of Twilight, as planned. Logarithm’s still off playing Army Men so we brought the new tank who joined the guild last week, Sirius. He worked hard all week and got a lot more epics.

We started right on Cho’gall – well, we had to kill trash first of course. But we started settling in to the fight. Everyone knew what they were doing. DPS switched to the adds, healers had a good balance.

We worked hard for two hours and then one attempt we got solidly into Phase 2. His health ticked down…. and down… and down. We started losing people. We called for the shaman to pop and keep killing him. He was at 1%…. then less…. then the last of us died. At .6%. That was a heartbreaker.

We did a few more tries that night but were getting sloppier so made the call to go to BWD and kill some farm bosses. We had a couple tries on Magmaw, then one shot Omnomtrom, then failed twice on Maloriak. It was pretty clear that the hard work on Cho’gall had made us tired and sloppy.

Next night, just before raid time I realized my third healer couldn’t come and we looked around for options. Kerick and I briefly discussed two healing it, but while I knew we could manage phase 1, I was really worried about phase 2. Fortunately we were able to get hold of Sharelore who runs with us a good bit. She agreed to bring her priest and we headed back.

This evening, our dps seemed even better but Sirius wasn’t surviving as well. After a good few wipes, we asked him to step out and brought in another guild tank. He did so pretty graciously and we got to work.

Things were a lot more stable with the new tank. He didn’t need as much healing and since he was a druid, his dps was pretty insane. He could even go cat when Reversion had the boss and get some real numbers in.

It took a few tries to settle in. Then we had an attempt that was working beautifully. Cho’gall was up on his throne calling eyeball adds. Our dps stunned and killed them. Our healers chained cooldowns. Both tanks took turns using their Tranquilities. I died. Other people died.

Then Cho’gall died.

The achievement spam was awesome; not just the kills for all of us, but the guild achievement too!

We lined up for screenshots but none of mine seem to have saved. I don’t know what’s up with that.

For the rest of the night, we were on a high. Reversion stepped out and let Sirius come back and we went and one shot Maloriak, Atramedes and Chimaeron – technically Chimaeron was a two shot, but the first attempt, someone accidentally pulled before the robot came up. So I’m not counting that.

Everyone in the raid really stepped it up this week. Some of our dps added 4k to their average. Most everyone got new gear or used Ask Mr. Robot to optimize and it really showed. Our next progression is going to be Al’Akir; we went and tried him and got into phase 2 twice in our four attempts. I don’t think we’ll have as much trouble with this guy.

But anyway, after a lot of thought I’ve realized why I really like Cho’gall. It’s the best fight I’ve done this tier for emphasizing the the raid as a group. Chimaeron is about your healers being good. Other fights are about positioning. Omnomtrom is about DPS switching targets. Maloriak is all on the tanks. Halfus – well it’s a little different every week; the first minute is a healing check, then it’s a burn fight.

Cho’gall requires tanks to trade swaps perfectly, to keep the boss positioned right, and to handle adds that have to be very carefully placed. A good tank will use all his cooldowns many times on that fight.

Healers have to coordinate who heals whom, who runs around healing the raid during the adds phase and who stays with the melee. In Phase 2, stacking cooldowns is really important.

Ranged DPS have to switch to adds, burn them down, and get back to the boss. Slowing and killing the Blood of Cho’gall adds is absolutely key to the fight.

Melee really get to shine in phase 2 with the eyeball adds. A good melee-er can keep one stunned while he slaughters it. They can help a lot with the worshipping too, although we found a good trick this time; have the whole raid stack carefully and then set our fire mage just a little farther out. If he wasn’t mind controlled, his Blast Wave could break out the affected people instantly. It meant we really didn’t have to think about worshiping when the adds weren’t out.

And of course, everyone has to not stand in bad. I thought our raid is really good at this, and our Cho’gall attempts showed me that I’m right. We almost always went into phase 2 with most people at 10 or less corruption. The adds tank usually had the worst time with corruption because he’s flirting with those stupid puddles.

So, I really think this fight shone as an example of a really good raid fight. I hope we have a lot more like that in 4.2!

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My guild had a 0.5% wipe on him too. But friday night we went to visit him again, and our first try was the one. We killed him with everyone still standing. It was such a clean fight compared to the chaos early tries were in p2.

This fight is really about raid cooperation and that’s what I love about it. Someone not pulling his weight with interrupts/switching target/etc, and it’s a painful wipe in p2. Everyone doing what he has to do, and it’s “Oh, he’s dead? Already?”

Yes, I’m really really proud of everyone involved – and that includes the tank who was willing to step out to let us get the kill. Everyone in the raid stepped things up this week and we earned that kill.

Our kill felt slightly like that too. I mean how phase 2 was more stable. I think it helps to think of phase 2 as a ‘kill adds fast’ stage and not as a mad scramble to burn the boss. If you treat it like the phase is suppose to go on a long time and you are not racing the clock then you don’t use suicidal strategies that get people killed. You dont waste extra time hitting the boss when you should be focused on the adds. If you think of it like the final phase of Chimeraon you are likely to all die fast.

I agree about liking the fight. Its the first fight that puts all the pieces together. The other fights before this in the raid teir teach you how to do Cho’gall. You have to handle large adds during the fight similar to Halfus, they have to be positioned correctly like on Maloriac, you have to kill the adds like Magmaw, need to stay out of the bad and group when needed like Atramedes, V&T, and Omnom, and chain raid cooldowns like on Chim.

It really is a fun fight. Blazingly chaotic. I really had to work hard at keeping any kind of dps going while moving around so much, and at the same time trying to keep track of where my melee partner is. Way fun and exhausting all at the same time. I think this fight forced me to improve every in every aspect more than any other, and it was great finding that I could do just that. I do wish sirius could have been in on the kill. He worked so very hard to get the gear together. But hopefully we can get it for him soon!

I love the way the whole raid really stepped up and took their game to the next level for this fight. It was clear with the chain 1shots on the other bosses that we have all improved in a serious way. All non-end bosses are going to seem easy now. We are going to have to keep improving though. Swapping Sirius for Dry improved our DPS so we are going to have to make that up in order to swap him back.

Grats on the kill! We’ve had a lot of <1% wipes this tier… Always so heartbreaking.

And you're right – Cho'gall is a well designed fight where all the roles get to shine, and it isn't plagued with the RNG issues that make several of the other encounters seem a bit unfair. (I'm looking at you, Al'Akir!)

Falahla it’s been so awesome to get to raid with you. I know I’ve improved in the last few months but seeing you go from “normal WoW player” to “awesome raider” has been really cool. I really think the success of our raid has been down to the willingness of everyone to work hard and work together.

A shout out to the Sunday/Monday Crits raid for getting him down last night! Great work guys! Wow, we are a serious progression guild now. We will have more than one crew that has cleared all raid content before the next patch!

That slot is a bit shaky. We have two people who tend to come more or less when they feel like it but it’s worked out ok so far. Now it’s summer and we’re having vacations and such be an issue but so far we haven’t had to cancel a night

Are really reliable slots are the Ret pally, healadin, hunter, two mages, enchance shammy, bear and tree. That leaves our off tank and other healing slots. Those rotate between people that are ‘amost always’ there and ones that are ‘usually able to fill in’. All that combined with even the reliables being at various times for various things means there is always tweaking to be done. It is a good thing we got down Chogal now bucause there will be more of the regulars out next weekend and in following weekends.

The adrenaline rush provide by this fight is amazing. So far, Chogall is the fight i’ve like the most. Perfect mix of everything. Al’Akir is way too random and Nef is…just hell :(

Btw, if you ever find yourself with only 2 healer for Chogall, it is totally possible to kill him anyway. Thats how we kill him every week. Going with only 2 healers means enough dps to get Chogall in P2 before the 4th big adds which greatly reduce the blood ooze chaos :)

We managed to get into P2 before the 4th add could spawn/die most of the time. So that helped. Our dps is looking awesome. I totally think we can two heal the first phase but phase 2 is so high on damage I just don’t know…. but we will give it a try if we need to.